The chart above shows how the S&P 500 reacted in the periods after the Federal Reserve stopped its first two quantitative easing programs. After the Fed stopped buying bonds in March 2010, the S&P 500 dropped 16% from its highest point on April 23, 2010 to its lowest point on July 2, 2010. The second program drew to a close at the end of June 2011 and was followed by a 19% decline between July 7 and October 3 of that year.

The Fed currently buys $45 billion in Treasury and mortgage debt each month. The central bank has cut the size of its bond-buying program by $10 billion at the last four meetings as it moves to normalize monetary policy after a period of unprecedented stimulus.

“This market is being supported by Fed policy. When you take one of those crutches away, you are going to get a negative effect on the stock market,” Boockvar said in an interview.

The signs of an unraveling have already begun to show. Biotech stocks, which he says are the riskiest, peaked earlier this year. The iShares Nasdaq Biotechnology ETF
/quotes/zigman/85342/delayed/quotes/nls/ibbIBB hit its highest point of the year on Feb. 25. “To me, that was the canary in the coal mine,” he said, adding that the Fed’s quantitative easing programs encourage risk taking. That has since rolled over into the performance of the Russell 2000
/quotes/zigman/2759624/realtimeRUT and high-flying stocks, he said.

External factors, such as the Greek debt crisis, also played a role in the last two stock-market declines. This time is no different, said Boockvar, pointing to the presence of “major” evaluation risks in the market.

“The stock market to me is extremely overvalued,” he said. “I still think the end result is the same, in that a lot of the QE fluff that drove the market in 2013 is going to come out in 2014.”

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